Maybe You’re Not Right and They’re Not Wrong

It may be that you’re a bit too caught up in yourself if the organization you’re trying to force change upon isn’t willing to adopt that change. If you see yourself as the one voice in the wilderness trying to move a group in a new direction, then maybe you need to look at whether or not the change you’re trying to effect is for the organization’s good, or your own sense of self-worth.

Maybe that group or organization has had some successes. Maybe they’re getting things done in a way that’s different from what you’re passionate about. Does it make them wrong? Wrong in your view, perhaps, but perhaps not wrong for that organization.

Maybe your passionate cries for change aren’t being taken as a positive thing. Maybe those cries are being heard in a completely different fashion than you intend, regardless of how many different approaches you try. Maybe instead of forming allies in your cause, you’re alienating those around you. Maybe instead of being seen as a motivating agent of change, you’re being seen as a distraction or worse a hindrance.

Maybe the organization’s also using you as a token: “Yep, at least we’ve got <him/her> around to keep us straight!” Those words are easy for people to say. Implementing the changes you’re passionate about aren’t quite so easy – but again, maybe the things you’re so passionate about aren’t a great fit for that organization.

If the organization’s not doing things that put people’s lives in jeopardy, or if they’re not behaving illegally or unethically, then perhaps you need to re-think why it’s so important for you to make them change. Maybe they really don’t need to change to be successful in their own view – and that’s completely acceptable.

Maybe in that context you’re not right and they’re not wrong.

Move on. It’s OK. Find a place where you’re not the sole voice in the wilderness. You’ll be happier, they’ll be happier.

CodeMash Call for Submissions Opening 15 September

The CodeMash call for submissions will open up on 15 September. The window will be very short this year. Make sure you don’t miss out: Get ready for the 15th!

Follow CodeMash on Twitter, monitor the CodeMash site and news feed, and keep up here for further details.

Speaking at the Philly Day of Agile

I’m going to be speaking at the Philly Day of Agile on 10 September. I’ll be giving my talk on making distributed teams work well. There’s also a lot of good content on making teams work well regardless of your location. I’m really excited because I’ve never been to Philly and I’m looking forward to meeting an entire new circle of folks from that community.

Phil’s herding the cats for this event and has a great summary of the lineup.

Please look me up if you’re attending! (Better yet, go register if you’re in that area and haven’t yet!)

IE 9 Security Settings on Server 2008

I do all my dev and testing work in a VM running Server 2008 R2. I inevitably run in to problems with the various default security settings for IE9 on this OS. In today’s incident, I was unable to get IE9 to properly render HTML 5 controls on KendoUI’s demo site. This is a problem since I’m working with Test Studio to record a few tests and it uses IE9 for recording.

Having a highly secured browser on your production boxes is a Good Thing; however, for your dev or testing systems it’s nothing but pain.

Two quick things you can do to ensure you’re able to be as friction-free as possible (well, aside from using a real browser like Firefox or Chrome, that is):

• Add the sites you’re working with to the Local Intranet or Trusted Sites zone. Tools | Internet Options | Security | Click “Trusted Sites” | Sites | Add. You can use wildcards to add entire domains.
• Turn off Enhanced Security Configuration. Start Server Manager, click the server, then Configure IE ESC (in the Security Information section). Turn ESC off for both Admin and regular users.

WARNING: You should spend a bit of time understanding what the impacts of this are for your dev/test environment, and you should never, ever do this sort of stuff on a production system.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, ergo:

UPDATED: Fixed busted picture URL. Whoopsies.

Two Important Blogposts for Functional Test Writers

Adam Goucher wrote two great posts that really lay out some critical, foundational things around functional testing, particularly with Selenium. Go read both if you do any sort of functional testing. (Or want to.)

Implicit Waits – understanding how and why Selenium handles waits is important. This post is particularly focused on Adam’s Py.Saunter project, but the crux of the matter is important regardless of whether you’re using Selenium, Watir, or Test Studio. (Shameless plug.) Awesome money quote:

“One of the key benefits of doing functional automation is you, the script creator, gain a greater understanding of the application being automated”

The Great Locator Debate – it’s crucial you define your locators in one and only one spot. Adam walks through pros and cons of defining those locators Globally or Locally in your Page Object class. Money quote:

“The coupling of the locators with the Page Objects should be a tight one and the desire to break that model should be a trigger that perhaps your object model is not as complete as you thought it was.”

Go read both posts.

(And subscribe to Adam’s blog while you’re there…)

Considering Attending STARWEST? We have Discount Codes!

Are you considering attending STARWEST, one of the premiere software testing conferences? My employer Telerik has a discount code that can help you save a good amount of money off your tickets!

If you're interested please contact me via e-mail at work and I'd be happy to pass the code on -- no strings attached, and no, I won't add you to some mailing list! My e-mail is Jim DOT Holmes AT Telerik DOT com.

Cross-Posting With my “Work” Blog

A significant part of my new job at Telerik’ involves writing a fair amount of content for my blog at Telerik, plus creating regular webcasts.

I don’t want to cross-post everything from that blog here, but I do think there are a number of things I’ll be writing about which have applicability to folks who read this blog.

Moving forward I’ll be trying a number of things including posting full articles both here and “there,” or just posting simple announcements here (“I posted something on <xxxxx> at Telerik. Go read it if you’re interested.”)

My goal is to avoid making this blog seem like a shill spot; however, I believe there’s some good value to the things I will be posting over there.

As always, I’m happy to hear feedback from my readers. Let me know in the comments, via e-mail (see contact link on the sidebar), or via Twitter.

Updated: Thanks to the comment from Jay, I’ve updated my work blog with an RSS feed. Sorry for the oversight!

Renaming a System Running SQL Server

I do all my dev and testing work in VMWare virtual machines which I clone off of a baseline image. I rename those new images based on their usage, and I constantly forget how to handle renaming the SQL Server instance.

Ergo, in order to make it easier for me to find the info next time I do it: here is the MSDN article showing how to do this.